Why Edmund Hates Sea Serpents
by Kandros Fir
Summary: In which Edmund must prove his worth to a sea serpent and fails miserably.


A/N: Written for Writer for God's challenge. Please don't kill me. I hope I didn't mess Edmund up.

When Edmund closed his eyes he didn't expect to dream. He wasn't a dreamer, he was a grounded realist. He really didn't expect to dream that he was on a boat surrounded by sea serpents. He liked detective novels wouldn't it be more logical to dream about those? Edmund had heard that dreams could tell a lot about a person, he wondered what this one said about him.

He decided to study the sea serpents more in depth. They were ugly buggers no doubt. There were a dozen surrounding his ship. Each one was a dozen feet long, with scales the color of piss and vinegar mixed in with oily black. Their teeth were razor sharp, and Edmund absentmindedly wondered what it would be like to have teeth like those. Then no one in boarding school would dare tease or torture him for being too nerdy. Honestly the kids in his school were too juvenile. He hated them so much.

His thoughts were interrupted when the sea serpents launched themselves at him. Well, he really wasn't expecting that. He briefly began screaming, before closing his mouth and remembering that a) it was a waste of breath, and b) it didn't matter if the serpents got him, this was a dream anyways. He was saved anyways. Edmund figured it was because his sense of self-preservation worked even in a dream.

A pair of eyes popped up in front of his ship then he felt himself lifted into the sky by another sea serpent, this one bigger and vaster than the others. It raised Edward's ship all the way above the clouds. Edmund did not pause to speculate on how he could breathe so high in the air. He was too busy wrapping his head around what had just happened.

The Sea Serpent yawned.

**That was a good nap, **it said.

Great, thought, Edmund, now sea serpents can talk. There is a point when "this is a dream" doesn't cut it.

The sea serpent then noticed Edmund.

**Who are you? **It asked curiously.

"I'm Edmund. You saved me, remember?"

**Shoot, I didn't mean to do that. I will lose my serpent cred if I helped a soft skin.**

"Wait you seriously don't remember saving me? I thought you saved me because I'm too special to die, especially in my own dreams," Edmund said.

**Hmm, so you think you're special? I was going to devour you to preserve my sea serpent cred, but here's another idea. Prove to me that you are special, and I will spare you. So begin.**

"Well," Edmund began, "This is my dream, so I created you. That makes me special."

**Not an especially strong beginning. Do you really believe that I believe that this is a dream? And if you created this world, it doesn't really follow that you needed me to save you. And even if that somehow is all true, is this world really all that creatively put together. Can you tell me that no one else could have made it? Is it like a piece by Mozart, that nothing can be added to make it better? No. Next.**

"Well, I have the highest grades in my school."

**I am vaguely aware of what a school is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do grades have any true value? I mean they definitely don't translate from school to school, because of different curriculums and all. Do they even translate from class to class? You may have had easy classes, while everyone else has hard classes. Your grades just compare to other kids in your class. Can you truly say that you had any worthy rivals to challenge you?**

** "**No, but I'm part of a private school, so that must count for something, and I have rich parents."

**So failing to find something to prove your worth in your own life, you try to cling tenuously onto your parent's worth, which tells me nothing of your worth as a human being? How pathetic and worthless you are. I should devour you now.**

This was not going the way Edmund planned. He was not a failure only fit to be eaten, he couldn't be! He had great deeds to do. He was destined to be a great leader greater than King Arthur! And even though there was no real danger, he couldn't let this end with the affirmation of his own worthlessness.

"I may not be able to prove my own worth as a human being right now, but I promise you in the future I will do great things. I promise you that by the time I reach manhood, I will prove that I am not worthless."

The serpent slid the ship closer to his eyes, until Edmund was close enough to see the veins running through them. Edmund felt as if the beast was peering into his very soul.

**Bold boast, Little One. Fine then, I shall spare you. But the next time we meet, you better have proven your worth, or I will be very angry. And I will devour you, but not before making you regret the fact that you were born.**

Then the creature laughed and disappeared,

and then Edmund was falling, falling deep into an abyss. There was no one to help him, no one who cared. He was cold and small and sometimes faces would zoom by but none of them ever looked at him. Edmund at this moment understood what the dream was telling him. He was worthless.

Edmund woke up and resolved to prove it false. He would be successful. He would be rich and famous and powerful, and when he stood at the top, he would laugh at the sea serpent because it was wrong. He would laugh at this dream because it was wrong. Edmund practiced his laughter, but it came out wrong, and forced and unnatural and sounded too much like the laugh of the sea serpent. He stopped.

I'm not scared of you Edmund thought. But after that dream, Edmund avoided any mention of the Loch Ness monster, and if he ever came across an article from a museum claiming it had found the skeleton of a sea serpent, Edmund would wordlessly throw the article away.


End file.
